The film’s central relationship is between Saito and Nicholson, a professional soldier approaching his twenty-eighth anniversary of army service (“I don’t suppose I’ve been at home more than ten months in all that time”). The Japanese colonel is not a military pro; he learned English while studying in London, he tells Nicholson, and likes corned beef and Scotch whiskey. But he is a rigidly dutiful officer, and we see him weeping privately with humiliation because Nicholson is a better bridge builder; he prepares for hara-kiri if the bridge is not ready on time.
The scenes in the jungle are crisply told. We see the bridge being built, and we watch the standoff between the two colonels. Hayakawa and Guinness make a good match as they create two disciplined officers who never bend, but nevertheless quietly share the vision of completing the bridge.
Hayakawa was Hollywood’s first important Asian star; he became famous with a brilliant silent performance in Cecil B. DeMille’s The Cheat (1915). Although he worked onstage and in films in both Japan and the United States, he was unusual among Japanese actors of his generation in his low-key delivery; in Kwai he doesn’t bluster, but is cool and understated—as clipped as Guinness. (Incredibly, he was sixty-eight when he played the role.)
Alec Guinness, oddly enough, was not Lean’s first choice for the role that won him an Oscar as best actor. Charles Laughton originally was cast as Col. Nicholson, but “could not face the heat of the Ceylon location, the ants, and being cramped in a cage,” his wife, Elsa Lanchester, wrote in her autobiography. The contrasts between Laughton and Guinness are so extreme that one wonders how Lean could see both men playing the same part. Surely Laughton would have been juicier and more demonstrative. Guinness, who says in his autobiography that Lean “didn’t particularly want me” for the role, played Nicholson as dry, reserved, yet burning with an intense obsession.
That obsession is with building a better bridge, and finishing it on time. The story’s great irony is that once Nicholson successfully stands up to Saito, he immediately devotes himself to Saito’s project as if it is his own. He suggests a better site for the bridge, he offers blueprints and timetables, and he even enters Clipton’s hospital hut in search of more workers, and marches out at the head of a column of the sick and the lame. On the night before the first train crossing, he hammers into place a plaque boasting that the bridge was “designed and built by soldiers of the British army.”
It is Clipton who asks him, diffidently, if they might not be accused of aiding the enemy. Not at all, Guinness replies: War prisoners must work when ordered, and besides, they are setting an example of British efficiency. “One day the war will be over, and I hope the people who use this bridge in years to come will remember how it was built, and who built it.” A pleasant sentiment, but in the meantime the bridge will be used to advance the war against the Allies. Nicholson is so proud of the bridge that he essentially forgets about the war.
The story in the jungle moves ahead neatly, economically, powerfully. There is a parallel story involving Shears that is not as successful. Shears escapes, is taken to a hospital in British-occupied Ceylon, drinks martinis and frolics with a nurse, and then is asked by Maj. Warden (Jack Hawkins) to return as part of a plan to blow up the bridge. “Are you crazy?” Shears cries, but is blackmailed by Warden’s threat to tell the Americans he has been impersonating an officer. Holden’s character, up until the time their guerrilla mission begins, seems fabricated; he’s unconvincing playing a shirker, and his heroism at the end seems more plausible.
Lean handles the climax with precision and suspense. There’s a nice use of the boots of a sentry on the bridge, sending hollow reverberations down to the men wiring the bridge with plastic explosives. Meanwhile, the British celebrate completion of the bridge with an improbable musical revue that doesn’t reflect what is known about the brutal conditions of the POW camps.
The next morning brings an elaborate interplay of characters and motives, as the sound of the approaching train creates suspense, while Nicholson, incredibly, seems ready to expose the sabotage rather than see his beloved bridge go down. (The shot of the explosion and the train tumbling into the river uncannily mirrors a similar scene in Buster Keaton’s silent classic The General, in which the train looks more convincing.)
Although David Lean (1908–1991) won his reputation and perhaps even his knighthood on the basis of the epic films he directed, starting with The Bridge on the River Kwai in 1957, there’s a contrarian argument that his best work was done before the Oscars started to pile up. After Kwai came Lawrence of Arabia, Dr. Zhivago, Ryan’s Daughter, and A Passage to India; all but Ryan were nominated for best picture, and the first two won. Before Kwai he made smaller, more tightly wound films, including Brief Encounter, Oliver Twist, and Great Expectations. There is a majesty in the later films (except for Ryan’s Daughter) that compensates for the loss of human detail, but in Kwai he still has an eye for the personal touch, as in Saito’s private moments and Nicholson’s smug inspection of the finished bridge. There is something almost Lear-like in his final flash of sanity: “What have I done!”
Casablanca
PG, 102 m., 1942
Humphrey Bogart (Rick Blaine), Ingrid Bergman (Ilsa Lund), Paul Henreid (Victor Laszlo), Claude Rains (Captain Louis Renault). Directed by Michael Curtiz and produced by Jack L. Warner and Hal B. Wallis. Screenplay by Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein, and Howard Koch.
If we identify strongly with the characters in some movies, then it is no mystery that Casablanca is one of the most popular films ever made. It is about a man and a woman who are in love, and who sacrifice love for a higher purpose. This is immensely appealing; the viewer is able to imagine not only winning the love of Humphrey Bogart or Ingrid Bergman, but unselfishly renouncing it, as a contribution to the great cause of defeating the Nazis.
No one making Casablanca thought they were making a great movie. It was simply another Warner Bros. release. It was an “A list” picture, to be sure (Bogart, Bergman, and Paul Henreid were stars, and no better cast of supporting actors could have been assembled on the Warners lot than Peter Lorre, Sidney Greenstreet, Claude Rains, and Dooley Wilson). But it was made on a tight budget and released with small expectations. Everyone involved in the film had been, and would be, in dozens of other films made under similar circumstances, and the greatness of Casablanca was largely the result of happy chance.
The screenplay was adapted from a play of no great consequence; memoirs tell of scraps of dialogue jotted down and rushed over to the set. What must have helped is that the characters were firmly established in the minds of the writers, and they were characters so close to the screen personas of the actors that it was hard to write dialogue in the wrong tone.
Humphrey Bogart played strong heroic leads in his career, but he was usually better as the disappointed, wounded, resentful hero. Remember him in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, convinced the others were plotting to steal his gold. In Casablanca, he plays Rick Blaine, the hard-drinking American running a nightclub in Casablanca when Morocco was a crossroads for spies, traitors, Nazis, and the French Resistance.